VW Golf mk5 GTi burning oil
Slider
Car in question is a 2006 (56 plate) Golf GTi, approx 22,000 miles. The car
seems to be burning quite a bit of oil. In the last 4-6 months, the oil
warning light has come on twice and I have had to add a litre of oil on both
occasions. We have checked with VW who say this is normal as the GTi can
use a litre of oil every 1000 miles. To me, this sounds far too excessive!
Chris Whelan
How often does it tell you in the owner's handbook to check it?
You really shouldn't run it that low on oil, then rely on the warning light
to remind you it needs topping up.
Oh, and 1000 miles per litre is not unusual on these engines.
Chris
--
Remove prejudice to reply.
Conor
checking the oil level is fucking stupid TBH. By the time the oil
warning light comes on, the damage has been done.
--
Conor
I only please one person per day. Today is not your day. Tomorrow isn't
looking good either. - Scott Adams
Dave Baker
"Slider" <sli...@slide.com> wrote in message news:g7pjt8$v09$1...@aioe.org...
Assuming by 4-6 months you mean about 5000 miles then it's excessive by the
standards of an ideally designed engine but all manufacturers will quote you
their 1 litre per 1000 miles bullshit to avoid any warranty claims. I guess
they have to set a minimum limit at some level or other but any higher
consumption than that would be ridiculous. The trouble is manufacturers are
using piston rings with less and less spring tension these days to reduce
frictional losses inside the engine and improve fuel consumption. Many
engines are right on the borderline between adequate ring sealing and
inadequate sealing leading to high oil consumption and reduced power. If an
engine runs in perfectly it should just be ok with low tension rings but it
doesn't make much of a problem during the running in phase for things to go
badly wrong. Too gentle usage for too long or using synthetic oil before the
pistons and bores have bedded in properly and it'll never run in fully.
There's nothing much you can do to cure it other than rebuild the engine and
run it in again which is clearly impractical. So the remaining option is to
try a thicker oil but that will cost you more in extra petrol than the cost
of the oil you save. That leaves you with living with it and to honest a
litre per 2500 miles is not that much of a problem. It's maybe 2 to 4 times
as much as an ideal engine would use but it hardly means you have stop to
check it every trip to the shops.
It may improve with more mileage and/or harder use for a while. An Italian
tune up can sometimes help. That means draining out the synthetic oil if
that's what it has in it, putting in some cheap and cheerful 10-40 and
caning the arse off it for a few hundred miles to try and run the
piston/bores in again. Full throttle and revs to the redline every chance
you get and then put the proper oil back in and see what happens.
Any decent modern engine that's been run in properly should use negligible
oil. My 2 litre Focus, even on 5-30 synthetic that's as thin as rat piss,
uses hardly enough to notice. The last change was 3000 miles ago and when I
checked it last week it was still right at the top of the stick. The half
litre I have left over in the 5 litre can I used for the last oil change
will easily last me until the next one.
BTW if you think your oil consumption is bad it reminds me about one of my
first cars nearly 30 years ago. A 1275 A series engined Morris Marina with
an engine that was so shagged it chucked out so much smoke you could rarely
see the cars behind you. I arranged to take it up to my uncle's garage in
Derbyshire 150 miles away to rebuild the engine over the holidays. I topped
it up with oil before I set off up the M1 and took another full gallon can
of 20-50 with me. 50 miles later the oil light came on and I stopped and put
half of the gallon can in the sump. Another 50 miles later it needed the
rest and I still had 50 miles to go. Climbing up through the hills of the
Peak District with a few miles to go the oil light came on again and the
engine partially seized under the load. I had to change down to third, then
second to maintain progress and in the end I was limping along at 20 mph and
praying to all the gods I could call to mind that it would make the journey.
There was certainly nowhere to stop to buy more oil and whether it would
have even started again is an unknown. My uncle's driveway was on quite a
steep slope and as I turned into that it got half way up in 1st gear and
croaked to its final halt with a horrible rattle and a small cloud of steam
and smoke. We had to tow it the rest of the way into the garage. The phrase
"making it by the skin of your teeth" doesn't quite do that journey justice.
A quick calculation indicates that its oil consumption was 1 gallon or 4.546
litres per 100 miles. A litre every 22 miles. It was costing me more in oil
than petrol. When your engine gets to that stage start to worry.
Ah thems were the days.
--
Dave Baker
Puma Race Engines
Doki
"Conor" <conor_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:6gb8b2F...@mid.individual.net...
> In article <g7pjt8$v09$1...@aioe.org>, Slider says...
>> Hi
>>
>> Car in question is a 2006 (56 plate) Golf GTi, approx 22,000 miles. The
>> car
>> seems to be burning quite a bit of oil. In the last 4-6 months, the oil
>> warning light has come on twice and I have had to add a litre of oil on
>> both
>> occasions. We have checked with VW who say this is normal as the GTi can
>> use a litre of oil every 1000 miles. To me, this sounds far too
>> excessive!
>>
> Not really. However leaving it a couple of months at a time without
> checking the oil level is fucking stupid TBH. By the time the oil
> warning light comes on, the damage has been done.
I'd be very surprised if a MK5 GTI doesn't have a level warning light.
Certainly my shite old Peugeot does.
Chris Bartram
> Any decent modern engine that's been run in properly should use negligible
> oil. My 2 litre Focus, even on 5-30 synthetic that's as thin as rat piss,
> uses hardly enough to notice.
None of my cars have used significant amounts of oil. The Mk1 Golf
*leaked* quite a bit over the alternator, like they do, and the 2 TDI
cars I've have from new and newish have used a bit until run in (approx
20k miles, it would seem). That includes the Mk2 Golf at 140K miles on
thinnish modern oil.
It does seem a good few VAG engines use a fair bit when new though.
Grimly Curmudgeon
drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Baker" <Nu...@null.com> saying
something like:
<snip>
>A quick calculation indicates that its oil consumption was 1 gallon or 4.546
>litres per 100 miles. A litre every 22 miles. It was costing me more in oil
>than petrol. When your engine gets to that stage start to worry.
A 1275 Marina was similarly the worst oil consumer I've come across -
about 40miles per pint iirc and that was on a new company car with a
warranty still in force. Smokescreen, of course, but not as bad as yours
by the sound of it.
The engine got changed, but that car was a pile of shit.
--
Dave
SE6a
Duncan Wood
My Grans was like that when I was given it, 13000miles old. I put the old
inlet valve stem seals on the exhausts & that pretty much solved that
problem.